To Morier it seemed that the important part of his work concerned South
Africa, in which, at the time, Portugal and Great Britain were the
European powers most interested. It was in 1877 that Sir Theophilus
Shepstone annexed the Transvaal, and many people, in Europe and Africa,
were talking as if this must lead to the expropriation of the Portuguese
at Delagoa Bay. Morier himself was as far as possible from the
imperialism which would ride rough-shod over a weaker neighbour. In
fact, he pleaded strongly for British approval of the pride which
Portugal felt in her traditions and of her desire to cling to what she
had preserved from the past. Once break this down, he said, and we
should see Portuguese dominions put up for auction, and England might
not always prove to be the highest bidder. Friendly co-operation, joint
development of railways, and commercial treaties commended themselves
better to his judgement, and he was prepared to spend a large part even
of his holidays in England in working out the details of such treaties.
He studied the people among whom he was, and did his best to lead them
gently towards reforms, whether of the slave-trade or other abuses, on
lines which could win their sympathy. He appealed to his own Foreign
Office to abstain from too many lectures, and to make the most of cases
in which the Portuguese showed promise of better things. 'This diet of
cold gruel', he says in 1878, 'must be occasionally supplemented by a
cup of generous wine, or all intimacy must die out.' Again in 1880, he
asks for a K.C.M.G. to be awarded to a Governor-General of Mozambique,
who had done his best to observe English wishes in checking the
slave-trade. 'Perpetual admonition', he says, 'and no sugar plums is bad
policy'--a maxim too often neglected when our philanthropy outruns our
discretion.

When Morier was promoted in 1881 to Madrid, he used the same tact and
geniality to lighten the burden of his task. No seasoned diplomatist
took the politics of Madrid too seriously. Though the political stage
was bigger, it was often filled by actors as petty and grasping as those
of Lisbon. The distribution to their own friends of the 'loaves and
fishes' was, as Morier says, the one steady aim of all aspirants to
power; and measures of reform, much needed in education, in commerce, in
law, were doomed to sterility by the factiousness of the men who should
have carried them out. In the absence of principles Morier had to stu